Contents

Biography

He became a lawyer in 1863 and was appointed to the Vinerian Chair of English Law at Oxford in 1882. In his first major work, the seminal An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution he outlined the principles of Parliamentary supremacy for which he is most known. He understood that the freedom British subjects enjoyed was dependent on the sovereignty of Parliament, the impartiality of the courts free from governmental interference and the supremacy of Common Law.

He later left Oxford and went on to become one of the first Professors of Law at the then new London School of Economics. There he published in 1896 his Conflict of Laws.

Dicey was a vigorous opponent of Irish Home Rule and published and spoke against it extensively from 1886 until shortly before his death [1] advocating that no concessions be made to Irish nationalism in relation to the government of any part of Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. He was thus bitterly disillusioned by the agreement in 1921 that Southern Ireland should become a self-governing dominion (the Irish Free State), separate from the United Kingdom. As extensively shown in the work of Professor Matt Qvortrup, A.V. Dicey was also one of the first supporters of the use of referenda in the United Kingdom despite his views on parliamentary supremacy.